Office 365

Microsoft has a new bundle that’s actually a pretty great deal – the software giant is offering one year of Office 365 Home, Skype Unlimited World and Skype global Wi-Fi hotspot access, as well as an Xbox Music one-year streaming pass for $199. It’s only on sale between November 10 and January 4, and Microsoft suggests that it might not even be around that long, as stock… Read More

Microsoft is a company with a new cloud focus, a new CEO, and new re-org, and a massive new hardware business that brought in around $3.5 billion in revenue in its most recent across two device categories alone. So if you aren’t completely sure what the hell Microsoft is, I don’t blame you.
The company’s CEO, Satya Nadella, speaking to the media last week at an event on… Read More

At TechEd Europe in Barcelona today, Microsoft announced the launch of a number of new APIs for Office 365, as well as new Office 365 SDKs for iOS and Android. The new APIs were previously only available in preview.
With the Office 365 APIs for mail, files, calendar and contacts, developers will be able to interact with Microsoft’s Office suite directly from their own applications. Read More

This morning, Microsoft announced that all Office 365 accounts will come with unlimited OneDrive storage. Gone are the 1 terabyte caps that were recently introduced. If you pay for Office, your storage is free.
It’s a good, if not surprising, move from Microsoft: The company has worked to improve the value profile of its Office 365, productivity-as-a-service offering for some time. Read More

After recently managing to stuff two feet into his mouth at the same time, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stopped by CNBC for a wide-ranging interview covering not only his recent comments on women in the workplace, but also his company’s bets on the cloud, and how Microsoft has long had an implicitly freemium business model. Read More

Microsoft is rolling out new Office 365 plans for companies with fewer than 250 employees that will slowly replace the company’s existing plans for small and midsize businesses. The company had already outlined some of these changes earlier this year, so this week’s announcement doesn’t come as a huge surprise.
Here is what these new plans look like:
Office 365… Read More

Today after the bell Microsoft reported its fiscal fourth quarter performance, including revenue for the period of $23.38 billion and earnings per share of $0.55. Analysts had expected the company to earn $0.60 on revenue of $23.00 billion.
In the quarter, Microsoft recorded Surface revenue of $409 million. Its operating income totaled $6.48 billion. Its revenue figure for the period grew by… Read More

Microsoft today announced a raft of new Office 365 plans for smaller businesses. The new offerings will eventually supplant its extant offerings.
The company is lowering the price of its most expensive smaller business offering — from $15 per seat per month to $12.50 — and raising the employee cap in some cases to 300 from 25. Microsoft has preserved a $5 per seat per month Office… Read More

Microsoft today announced a number of forthcoming updates to the Outlook Web App for Office 365 at its Exchange Conference in Austin. Jeff Teper, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of its Office Service and Servers group, said that the overall strategy here is to embrace “cloud-first, mobile-first communications.” Read More

The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — barely came out of the gates before John Taschek let Comcast have it, and really you need to see the visual on this one. After the salute to the internet provider, talk circled around Microsoft’s release of Office for iPad. Is it important? Well, no one on the show seemed to… Read More

Microsoft today announced a new plan for Office 365 that’s geared to individuals who want to subscribe to its suite of productivity applications. For $6.99/month (or $69/year), you will be able to get a single license for Office 365 that you can use on one PC or Mac and one tablet. This new plan will launch later this spring.
Just like Microsoft’s other Office 365 subscriptions… Read More

Microsoft announced a major update to Office 365 today that adds an intelligent, machine-learning powered social network and “intelligence fabric” on top of its productivity apps. This Office Graph, as the company calls it, will slowly find its way across all of the Office 365 applications, but for now, Microsoft is only offering a sneak peek with a wide roll-out planned for the… Read More

Today Microsoft flipped the switch on Student Advantage, a program, announced in October, that extends the availability of Office to students of educational institutions that pay for Office 365 for their staff and faculty.
According to Microsoft, 35,000 educational institutions are eligible for Student Advantage, which provides access to the ProPlus SKU of Office 365, again provided that its… Read More

It’s been six months since Microsoft launched Office 365, its subscription-based version of Office for businesses and consumers. Over 2 million consumers now subscribe to Office 365 Home Premium (the Office 365 “family pack” with five licenses) and 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies are using it in some form. This, Microsoft says, makes it the company’s faster… Read More

You’ve been played before. You’re vulnerable and nervous about opening up again. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been lied to.
Back in 2011 we heard rumors that the iPad would be graced with Office’s presence in 2012, and shortly thereafter we saw an actual photo of Office on an iPad.
But… nothing. And then some more nothing. Until today. Read More

Today at its analyst event, Microsoft announced a new milestone for its Office 365 Home Premium product, its cloud-based subscription-paid productivity suite, stating that it now has more than 2 million paid subscribers. That is up 100%, or 1 million subscribers, since May 29th.
Previously, Microsoft touted that it had signed up its first 1 million consumer subscribers for Office 365 in 100 days. Read More

Microsoft is offering new capabilities for building business apps with Office 365 and Windows Azure — part of a larger effort to offer services that can leverage its cloud environment for rapid build out.
Rapid delivery was one of the themes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer discussed on the first day at the Build conference. Read More

After Bing and its Scroogled campaign, Microsoft is now taking aim at Google Docs. Jake Zborowski, Microsoft’s senior product manager for Office, actually published two anti-Docs blog posts today: one hones in on document fidelity, the other – which includes a number of user testimonials – argues that Google Docs isn’t quite ready for primetime. Read More

Microsoft today announced that it will fold about 100 sales people from Yammer into the Office 365 team. Microsoft also is making a point to focus on identity management and other issues as part of its road to full integration.
The news follows the road map that Microsoft set at its SharePoint Conference last November. In March, Microsoft detailed the transition and how Yammer will co-exist… Read More

When it comes to productivity apps, Office is still clearly the market leader, and Microsoft is now also quickly iterating on its online apps for Office. When it comes to its competition with Google’s online productivity apps, though, it’s hard to figure out if Microsoft is feeling superior or threatened (or a bit of both). Earlier today, I talked to Michael Atalla, the director… Read More